A few weeks back we asked some questions to find out how you, our readers, are using your phone. Now we are back with the answers and they have some pretty interesting stories to tell. Did you ever wonder what kind of phone usage is normal? We seem to have a pretty good idea...

> In reply to Derch @ 2011-05-04 03:09 from FJ0V - click to readYou're right bro, Samsung galaxy has a huge display of 4"+ but whats the use of it???? Is it possible to carry the mobile in the pocket?? and also i have seen so many samsung mobiles of my friends but none of them have a good build quality they always complain about breakage of some parts and also when u hold the mobile it wont give u a solid feel

Would be interesting to see the breakdown of how many people responded from which geography. Then we could guage accurately the skew between European responders & Asian responders for a lot of these features.

If for example, of the 15,000 replies, 10,000 of them were from Asia then you could expect that there will be a larger number of users of each feature. I put daily for a lot of features but there could have been 3 Asian responses for every 1 European response which would make it seem like each feature is 3 times as popular in Asia.

Not knocking the survey as I was very interested in the results so it's for my own personal interest that I'd like to see the geographic breakdown

Impressed!!! I was bit critical about the questions during poll, saying that they were far too superficial, but elaborate results speak a lot. Gr8 job!
Nice to see that phones r still being used as phones. I was tending to forget that feature, with an awful 1min:30mb (outgoing call:data traffic ratio)

> In reply to Derch @ 2011-05-04 01:49 from FJ0V - click to readI have had a hands on on my friend's nokia n8 and i loved it .....ui is good.....camera is just superb ................ But samsung galaxy s2 will easily beat n8 in every aspect..........its gonna have a hdmi out via mhl and also usb on the go + good camera and good speakers and sound quality as well ....... :-)

This is why I still use nokia so many things on this list they do best.
1 Phone, no question
2 alarm clock, nokia have fast access and great alarms with mostly great speakers, htc, apple, samsung, not so much
4 Flash drive support, none on apple and windows phone(i know not yet)
5 bluetooth transfers
6 watching movies, no other platform has the codec support that nokia does, not even close
7 teather, jokiu spot isn't being locked down by american carriers and I have been using it for over half a decade with 4 different phones with nothing extra other than the cost of the app, this is new and being locked down by andriod and ios, having to pay extra every month
8 photos, nuff said
9 digital map and gps, free for life and ovi maps is amazing
10 radio we have it, plus the fm transmitter on many of its high end phones, not something you see in all driods and no apples
11 office docs, comes with software
12 tv out comes with cables, if driod and ios did this then more would use it. Apple charges another $40 for the tv out cable i think and only apps written can use it, nokia everything on the screen goes to your tv, hdmi, and regular tv out
13 weight tracker, sport tracker blows away nike plus, you can do way more than running and walking with sports tracker
14 discover new places, find me, ovi maps, and other built in software ready to go
15 listen to music, not the best player, but great speakers and sound quality, support for micro sd cards, usb OTG, you can have access to way more music and memory than any other phone or platform. traveling, use the hdmi out and get biggest speakers in a hotel room through your tv. its a huge win over anything the competition has

Web browsing and email work, but I know andriod and apple win here. Not going to claim in wins in games either but it works quite nice, hdmi as well very nice, comes with cable again. Social loses to andriod, beat apple. So all in all Steve from All About Symbian is spot on that the n8 is probally the best phone out there right now in over all performace and this poll kinda proves it in my mind for most of what this shows.
8

I would've put "daily" to a lot of features, but didnt do so because anything internet connected (rss, email, web etc), I do on a pc, because there is always one nearby and its much better because of big screen (hint hint to 4" screens which can fold to 20" on the go:). So if you dont spend a lot of time in public transport for instance, there isnt that much need to use mobile phone while you have your notebook on your lap:)

If questions would include "forget about pc", then we would've seen better results in Europe:)

I noticed that European users use less features than the others. Maybe it's because they have dedicated devices for these features. They have digital cameras, USB sticks, and even flashlights, and they prefer using network services via computers (because of the big screens) which are readily available at home or at work. This is not the case across the rest of the world, where people have one handheld computing device that does it all.

> In reply to DK @ 2011-05-03 10:27 from Ere1 - click to readThere is considerable sample bias in surveys like this. For example the Africans and Asians most likely to answer a survey like this are probably well educated and belong to the middle class or above. Especially in Africa that means extremely skewed results.

Furthermore, GSMArena is a European site in origin, which means that the Europeans are most likely to represent something closer to a balanced sample of the general phone users in Europe. This also means that comparisons between Europeans and others are likely to be statistically worthless.

I respect your point of view, but try to go new places such as dance clubs or bars, or just tourism with your laptop... a Smartphone with GPS and google maps will do (specially in europe)...
Music on the go, taking some nice pictures, maybe a couple HD video +720p... All of this in the same device, without filling your backpack with dedicated devices...

I recently live in a US city I had never been before and the second day I bought a smartphone, and because I did, I was able to travel a lot, going to concerts, and choosing last time movies, without wasting my time lost wandering around...

they've been trying to market this to consumers since the 90's (not necessarily over mobile devices). but the main problem with video calling is the purpose. when you 'call' someone it's to chat. so for 90% of the time during the chat you don't care what the person is doing 'visually'. i mean wathcing someone's face watching you face while chatting "over the phone" doesn't appeal to many. a very small few, but definitely not many.

this is also why sms and im's are so widely used. most of the time you'd don't need to 'hear' the person you're chatting with. just need to see the response and be able to reply. i find if i need to know 'right now' i'll make a call. if it can wait i'll message.

i'm not saying video calls are useless. they do have niche uses. but for those that say it's a feature they'd use if they could, i'll bet 99% of them will use it once or twice then 'never' again.

Terrific information what an excellent job thank you very useful indeed, however, you missed one question; How many people make and receive VOIP (SIP) calls on their smartphone via WiFi. I personally find it a useful feature and use SIP service extensively when the opportunity arises as it saves me money.